After the outbreak of COVID-19 in China during early January this year and its dissemination globally within a few days, health experts have suggested ways to check its spread exponentially among the rest of the population. In the age of internet connectivity, work-from-home and self-isolation have been advised as solutions to ensure social distancing and avoid large-scale social gatherings. Experts have asked governments and private enterprises to keep people at...

-The Hindu Innovative techniques needed to extend nutrition services in urban areas, it says Poor women in urban areas were shorter, thinner and more anaemic as compared to those from higher wealth categories, according to a new study which calls for policy initiatives to focus on urban poor women to curb malnutrition. The research aims at determining the levels and trends of different forms of malnutrition among urban poor women and look beyond...

-The Hindu There is a link between disability, loss of employment and impoverishment in rural India Of the world’s population, 15% live with some form of disability. Are disabilities associated with economic hardships through loss of employment and consequent impoverishment in rural India? For lack of more recent data (the NSS does not cover disabilities) we tried to answer this question by using the two rounds of the India Human Development Survey...

-Hindustan Times Currently, two of the Government of India’s (GoI) largest schemes focussed on reviving the rural economy have been the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN). With food inflation hitting 14% in December 2019 and real rural wages declining for eight consecutive months (latest data available till October), rural India is among the worst hit by the current economic slowdown. Providing...

  A recent report of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) brings forth the dichotomy between digital divide and India’s transition towards a cashless economy. The rural-urban divide in access to computer and internet is quite stark, according to the report entitled 'Key Indicators of Household Social Consumption on Education in India, July 2017 to June 2018'.   The 75th round National Sample Survey (NSS) report on education finds that...